Tag: graphic novels

Heartbreaking but hopeful nonfiction graphic novel about the life of the author, Jarrett Krosoczka. After giving a TED talk about his upbringing and receiving an overwhelmingly positive response, he decided to create this book. I’m glad he did.

Jarrett was born in 1977 in Worchester, Massachusetts. His mother was young at the time of his birth and, as he would later find out, struggling with heroin addiction. His father’s identity remained somewhat of a mystery, Jarrett does not learn his name until he is almost a teenager. For a time when he is small, Jarrett lives with his mother, though she eventually turns back to heroin and criminal activity. At the age of 3 he goes to live with his grandparents, who despite their own rocky marriage, love and raise Jarrett with all of the nurturing he could ever ask for. They take him to visit his mother in jail and throughout her detox stays, answer his questions and see him through school, but most importantly they encourage his desire to draw, which he does to escape from the pain of not having a mom.

The novel follows Jarrett until he graduates from high school. Although he does eventually discover his dad and develop a relationship with him, he continues intermittent contact with his mother due to her drug addiction. Years later, as a successful and best selling author, he decides to share this story to connect with other people.

Anyway, I loved this book. It is YA, but deals with very adult issues. I imagine that it resonates with many people, particularly now due to the overwhelming prevalence of the opioid/meth epidemic. Even as a middle school teacher, I taught many students who were being raised by aunts and uncles and grandparents, mostly due to their own parents being incarcerated or simply gone, addicted to drugs.

Review for "The Best We Could Do" by Thi Bui (2017)
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

When I finished reading this on a Saturday morning at 3:20 am, I cried like a baby.

The Best We Could Do is a beautifully drawn graphic novel that completely hooked me from the first few pages. In it, the author Thi Bui begins her journey as a first time mother, seeking to understand the complex political and personal history of which she is a part. She talks to her parents, Vietnamese immigrants who came to America in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, as well as her brother and sisters to construct a story that’s engaging and unique.

This story is not linear, there are various dates and timelines before, during, after the Vietnam War jumping all over the place. It’s quite alright, the complicated nature of the story necessitates this format. The story of the author’s life begins in pre-war Vietnam, with the lives of her parents. They meet, marry, and have six children, two of which don’t survive infancy. They struggle through poverty, war, and conflict going on around them until they decide to escape by boat to a refugee camp in Malaysia. After several months they find themselves in America, living in the Midwest. The cold eventually forces them to California, where the author spends the rest of her childhood.

The story doesn’t end there, however. There are struggles with assimilation in a new country, of a family navigating the waters of what it really means to be ‘American.’ There is also the hauntings of the ghosts of the past, which Thi Bui attempts to rectify through this book.

With the current rhetoric going on right now around immigration and who or what is considered “legal,” I felt it was necessary to read this book. We hear about and see pictures of people coming to American soil by boat, by foot. Send them back home, they say. Children coming on their own, entire families crossing fences clearly marked “Keep Out.” Split them up and that’ll teach them. Yet they still come. They die coming here. Smart people will look past the fluff and the politics and attempt to understand their lives, the question of why they risk so much to come here in the first place. This book is a good place to start in explaining the complexities of human location and the desperation it can breed–and why legality is a small price to pay when your life is a living hell and your children won’t make it past their 12th birthdays. Deep questions with no answers. How can you go home when there’s literally nothing to go home to? This book will help you understand that.

For those that don’t like graphic novels, I would recommend that you give this book a try. It is so revelatory and timely that one would be surprised. Four and a half stars.

Another strange Top Ten Tuesday topic is official today, it’s “Series I’ve Given Up On.” I don’t read serial fiction much anymore, so this topic isn’t for me. There was a time, though, as a young grasshopper when I was obsessed with Sweet Valley High, Nancy Drew, and The Babysitter’s Club, but we won’t talk about that, will we?

I’ve decided to explore some graphic novels today. Whether you call it a graphic novel or a comic book, I find the medium to be highly underrated. There is always a visual element to storytelling, and some authors/illustrators are doing it quite well. The following graphic novels I’ve either read or have been on my radar for a while:

Top Eleven Kick-Ass Graphic Novels

Maus, Art Speigelman. Maus is probably one of the best graphic novels ever produced, nearly 25 years after its first publication. It’s the story of the author’s father’s experiences during the Holocaust, told through very brilliantly drawn cartoons. Even though the Jews are represented as mice (the Nazis are cats), you still cannot help but to be deeply moved by it. When I was a classroom teacher I used to read this with my 7th graders and they loved this book.

Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi. Another classic graphic novel all about a very precocious girl growing up during the Iranian Revolution of the late 1970’s and 1980’s. She’s feisty and definitely not your typical “little” girl narrator.

Waltz with Bashir, Ari Folman and David Polonsky. A story of a soldier’s repressed memories during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The soldier follows up with various people who were in the conflict, trying to fill in the holes in his memory. The story is never completely there, but this is still a fascinating book.

Deogratias, Jean Phillippe Stassen. A graphic novel about the Rwandan genocide. I didn’t like this book so much, there’s a lot of switching back and forth through time and I found the narration too confusing to follow. I do, however, recommend that you read it if you’re into graphic novels and form your own opinion on it.

Diary of a Teenage Girl, Phoebe Gloeckner. I wrote a review for this book and you’ll find it here. Fashioned as a diary, this is a graphic novel about a 15-year-old girl growing up in the 70’s who begins having really creepy sex with her mom’s 30-something-year-old boyfriend. This relationship is not presented as grooming or pedophilia, but one in which the main character actively and happily takes part in. It’s disturbing, but it’s a book that provokes a level of thought that I didn’t think was possible.

Zahra’s Paradise, Amir. This one I haven’t read yet, though it’s on my radar. It’s about a protester’s death during fraudulent elections in Iran in 2009. The death was captured on social media, and this book is a fictionalization of this story.

Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty, G.Neri. I also wrote a review for this book and you’ll find it here. Graphic novel that revisits the true story of Robert “Yummy” Sandifer, an 11-year-old child who died in Chicago in 1994. A member of a gang, he racked up 23 felonies and 5 misdemeanors before carrying out a violent hit, which mistakenly ended the life of a 14-year-old girl. Several days later, Robert was murdered by members of his own gang who feared he was an informant. It’s a meditation on inner city gangs and violence without sounding preachy. Gorgeous drawings too.

Nat Turner, Kyle Baker. This one’s on my radar. It’s all about the 1831 Virginia rebellion led by Nat Turner, a slave who, upon hearing a voice from heaven that instructed him to do violence, rose up with a group and killed 55 slave holders before being captured and hanged. Even though don’t like the fact that it takes much of its info from William Styron’s Confessions of Nat Turner (a bogus, historically inaccurate account), this one’s still worth a read.

The Best We Could Do, Thi Bui. This one’s on my radar and currently in my possession. With all the news lately on refugees and immigration, I think it is completely fitting to read this graphic novel about a family’s escape from the war in Vietnam and their subsequent life in America. I’ll have the review when I finish it.

That’s right. I have 11. Anyway, the last book is Black Hole by Charles Burns. I currently have possession of this book and will be reading it over the next few weeks. It’s all about those awkward years you spend as a teenager. It’s good and thick and a really dark read, but I’m liking it so far.